side imaging, even in the murray is awesome! John, if you can justify the expence you should get it, it's what I'll have when I can afford it.
I saw my mates side imaging combo and it was so good, you can see the structure under the water, which makes it much better to fish.
For example, we knew from experience where to bounce a lure off a certain branch and get a fish after about 3 months of fishing this one spot.
He came in and scanned it, and was onto his first fish in about five minutes!
It turned out, we had the way the snag lay out of sight incorrect and had been casting into a rootball.
It still produced fish for us, but we spent a lot of time getting unsnagged too.
But as I said he had it all sorted in no time.

they look great, but ive always had trouble understanding them. the pictures seem like they are zoomed right out or something. perhaps im used to a conventional sounder and just need to adjust to side imaging concept. would love to have a play with one and see how they read some of the places i fish though.

I'm tossing up on getting one local or saving $1500 and getting one from the USA.

The USA one only shows feet or fathoms, speed in miles/hr and temp in Fahrenheit though. I normally use feet for depth and knots for speed so the only the temp readout being in Fahrenheit would be annoying.

hey mate my old man got his colour lowrance from the states and saved a heap of cash, has feet and meters and temp is in celsius. but it has no warranty though so its a bit risky. suss it out as you should be able to get one with aus measurements?????

I have had the 797 ( the older model) for about 2 1/2 years now. Magic piece of gear.

Side imaging does take some getting used to but with a sound understanig of how it works the images are sefl explatory. They work just like and ultrasound which i use at work daily so makes aklot of sense to me.
most the pic's actually look like the real object so it is easier to work out. To identify the location size and orientation of structure , there is no comparison. I have extensive pics on mulwala and have gone back and looked at them with the water down amazing. has put alot fish in our boat.

i have a 798 si, it really is worth the extra dollars.
i fish mul heaps and thought i knew my usual haunts pretty well , after scanning these areas i have found structure i would have not dreamed was there. have even found 2 sunken barges near the bridge not even TB knew was there along with a sunken ski boat near burke street.
the gps takes a while to fire sometimes, have not downloaded the latest software for it yet....my bad.
pm me your e-mail and i'll send some screen shots as i have not worked out how to post here.

yes I have the 798 have only had it on the water once so far it is fantastic
shows everything on the bottom and to the sides, picked it up from the US for under $1500 Aud half the price of them here in Australia if you don't mind imperial
cheers rossco

Are you able to set the time zone to AEST? I've read elsewhere that the US version only allows US time zones. This impacts on time display and also if you have the Navionics charts, the tide times are all out of sync.

I'm not sure if it has an impact on the actual GPS performance (time to get a fix and accuracy) or not.

I got a quote from the US for the 798cxi unit, Weathersense module and Aust Navionics charts for $1850AU delivered. I'm still undecided if the units of measure and time restrictions are going to be too anoying and just pay the extra for a local one.

I did some reading around the net and while the specs haven't been released as yet, I would think the Lowrance units would be pretty good. I saw mention from one Aus supplier that the StructureScanâ„¢ unit probably won't be Oz until 2010.

Hopefully I will have had plenty of practice on the Humminbird by then.

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